"Buffalo had a track
which was dignified by the name of railroad as early as 1834, and two
years prior to that, two railway companies had succeeded in obtaining
a charter with Buffalo as part of their respective corporate names. The
two companies were incorporated on the same day, April 14, 1832, one becoming
the Buffalo and Erie Railroad Company."

Early Steam Experiments

Buffalonians as Railway
Promoters

Extraordinary Expansion

The Railway Era cannot
be properly considered to have come until the middle decade of the Nineteenth
Century, at least so far as it affected means of transportation to and
from Buffalo, but for almost a generation prior to that, efforts were
being made by enterprising farseeing Buffalonians to secure for their
geographically-favored site means of transportation other than those that
passed along the highways or the waterways. Many felt that the opening
of the Erie Canal in 1825 and the placing of luxurious canal-packets thereon,
designed particularly for "express" travel therealong, afforded the people
of the western city all that they could reasonably desire in the way of
comfort while expeditiously traveling to Albany or New York City. And
although the first packets took about nine days to complete the journey
from Buffalo to New York City, and the later packets could not hope to
exceed a speed of four miles an hour, the general citizen was happy in
the possession of such facilities. Indeed, complaint was soon made of
the "rapid movements" of packet boats on the Erie Canal. However, a few
were agitating for the iron road, and the steam locomotive.

Early Steam Experiments

-Oliver Evans,
whose principle of grain elevating was adapted by Joseph Dart in the 'forties
to meet the pressing needs of the grain forwarders in Buffalo, patented
a steam-wagon as early as 1782- a high pressure engine, placed on wheels,
which transported itself a mile and a half. Twenty years later Richard
Trevethick, in England, patented a steam carriage which was practically
applied on the Merthyr-Tydfil railway in Wales. But another two decades
were destined to elapse before the first railway was built in the United
States. According to the record, the first railway constructed in America
was projected by Gridley Bryant in 1825. It was four miles long, and extended
from granite quarries at Quincy, Massachusetts, to Neponset river. But
it was run by horse-power, and so was not radically different from the
tramways which had been used in British mining centres for two hundred
years. In 1827 the second American railway, that from near Mauch Chunk,
Pennsylvania, to the Lehigh river, was begun. The first locomotive to
actually begin running in America was in 1829; it was built by George
Stevenson in England. The Delaware & Hudson Canal Company was the
first American transportation company to make practical use of a steam
locomotive; the engine, built in Stourbridge, England, was running from
the company's mines near Honesdale, Pennsylvania to the terminus of their
canal at Honesdale during the summer of 1829. In 1830 there were
twenty-three miles of railroad completed in the United States, the tracks
in some cases being only oaken ties placed longitudinally on wooden or
stone crossties, and in other cases oaken rails upon which strips of one-half
or five-eighths inch iron were spiked. The latter were known as, trap
rails, and the dread of early passengers along such roads was that the
strip of iron would become unfastened and curve upward as the carriage
passed over it, and so impale the passengers.

New York State was
interested in another means of transportation, namely over the Erie Canal,
at the time that railway-building began; and therefore it did not foster
railway promotions. However, the people of the State were not dilatory
in the matter. It is recorded that the New York Central road was "projected"
in 1825, but "the origin of practical competition between railroads and
between cities" may be considered to have begun with the building of the
New York and Erie road, the construction of which was hastened "with a
view to divert to New York the traffic which had before gone to Boston
from the West, via Albany." The New York and Erie railroad was commenced
in 1836, and completed in 1851 as far as Dunkirk. The Boston and Albany
had completed its through organization byway of the Western railroad (Massachusetts)
and the Albany and West Stockbridge in 1842. In 1848 the railway mileage
of the United States was 6,491, which meant that the steam railroad had
passed beyond the experimental stage and had demonstrated its utility.

Buffalonians as Railway
Promoters

-Enterprising men
of the village had been quite prepared to foster the movement through
its early and uncertain experimental stage. The first steam railway brought
into operation in New York State was the Mohawk and Hudson road, from
Albany to Schenectady. Charter had been granted to the projectors in 1826,
but it was not until August, 1830, that construction began. It was completed
in September of the next year (1831), and in October was carrying as many
as four hundred passengers in one day between the two cities. The name
of the railway was later changed to the Albany and Schenectady.

The West was ever
before the eyes of the capitalists of the east even in the early 'thirties,
and Buffalo was the logical gateway to the West. As early as 1831 a movement
was on foot to secure a charter for a railway connecting Buffalo with
the Hudson. Presumably, it was the New York and Erie railroad project
that Buffalonians were endeavoring to further when in April, 1831, certain
residents of Erie county addressed a letter to Governor Throop "on the
subject of a contemplated railroad from Buffalo to the Hudson river,"
and urged the "propriety of its being built by the State." David Long,
Otis Turner, WilliamMills and C. Vandeventer signed the letter.
A Buffalo journal for the 6th of September, 1831, carried a notice which
read:

"Railroad--At a numerous
and respectable meeting of the citizens of Buffalo, held at the Eagle
Tavern on the 6th of September, for the purpose of taking into
consideration the subject of railroad communication between this place
and the Hudson river, Bela D. Coe was called to the chair, and James Stryker
was appointed secretary."

The meeting favored
cooperation with others in the central and eastern parts of the State
for the construction of such a road ' and a committee was formed. The
members were: Samuel Wilkeson, James Stryker, Reuben B. Heacock, J. R.
Carpenter, Lewis F. Allen, Bela D. Coe, Samuel Russell, S. Thompson, Heman
B. Potter, Isaac S. Smith James McKnight and Horatio Shumway.

Fortunately for
the railway promoters, the State legislators did not at that time feel
that railways could ever seriously compete with the Erie Canal in the
matter of freight transportation, otherwise there is reason to believe
that the railway charter would not have been granted for very many years,
for the railway would constitute direct opposition to the canal, in the
construction of which the state had invested much money. But the railroad
advocates were so enthusiastic as to the future of the steam road that
a suggestion was made that even the Erie Canal be "converted into a railroad."
Legislators were considering the petition for a charter for the Erie railway
in 1834-35, and on February 23, 1835, the Canal Commissioners were actually
asked for a report on the relative cost of construction and maintenance
of canals and railroads. The Commissioners reported that "it will not
be difficult to show that the expense of transportation on railroads is
very materially greater than on canals." Therefore there could be no unsurmountable
objection to the granting of the charter. Many years passed, however,
before the Erie road reached Buffalo.

Buffalo had a track
which was dignified by the name of railroad as early as 1834, and two
years prior to that, two railway companies had succeeded in obtaining
a charter with Buffalo as part of their respective corporate names. The
two companies were incorporated on the same day, April 14, 1832, one becoming
the Buffalo and Erie Railroad Company, with power to construct and operate
a line from Buffalo through Chautauqua county to the State line, and the
other, the Aurora and Buffalo Railroad Company, authorized to run from
Buffalo to the village of Aurora, now East Aurora. Considerable stock
was sold in Buffalo and elsewhere, and the route to Aurora was surveyed
by William Wallace. But the monetary panic of 1837 occurred before construction
of either railway had begun, and nothing was accomplished. Calvin Fillmore,
uncle of Millard Fillmore, was among the incorporators of the Aurora and
Buffalo Railroad Company.

The Buffalo and Black
Rock railroad, which is claimed to have been the first constructed within
the limits of Erie county, was in reality atramway, or at best
a street-railway. It was opened in 1834, and was operated by horse-power,
as has been described in an earlier chapter. The Buffalo and Niagara Falls
road, which was built in 1836, has also been before referred to. It was
the first railway along the Niagara Frontier to be operated by steam.
The first locomotive ran along that road from Black Rock to Tonawanda
on August 26, 1836. The railway was thus completed just before the financial
panic came, and was able to survive it, whereas other promising railway
enterprises were either abandoned or seriously jeopardized and delayed
by the financial stringency.

In August, 1836, subscription
lists of the Buffalo and Attica Railroad Company were opened in Buffalo.
The issue was soon withdrawn, and for some years the stock was not again
offered. However, the iron road was coming gradually nearer and nearer
to Buffalo. The first stretch was from Albany to Schenectady; the second,
that from Schenectady to Utica, was finished in 1836; the third, from
Utica to Syracuse, was opened in 1839; the remaining links were added
within three years, so that with the opening of the Buffalo and Attica
line on January 8, 1843, Buffalo had access by railroad with the outside
world, the Buffalo and Attica railroad adding the last link to a chain
of connected roads stretching across the State to Albany.

The next decade was
marked by the prosecution of innumerable railway enterprises. The country
had 7,500 miles of railways by the year 1850, and it would seem that New
York State had been especially active. In 1851,by the opening
of the Hudson River road to Albany, and the finishing of the New York
and Erie to Dunkirk, New York City obtained two complete connections by
rail with Lake Erie. From Buffalo a westward extension of rails along
the southern shore of the lake as far as the Pennsylvania boundary, was
opened by the Buffalo and State Line Railroad Company in February, 1852.
Larned writes:

"In that year (1851)
two railways from the western end of Lake Erie to Chicago were brought
into operation and the needed links between our State Line road and Toledo
were filled in the next year, completing a railway connection of Chicago
with New York. In 1854 the chain was stretched from Chicago to the Mississippi,
and it was lengthened to the Missouri in 1859. Before that time a halt
to all business enterprise had been called by the financial crash of 1857,
and the halt was prolonged by the Civil War.

"Meanwhile, in 1852,
Buffalo had been doubly connected with the New York and Erie railway by
a line to Corning, built by the Buffalo and New York Railway Company,
and a second line to Hornellsville (now Hornell), produced by an extension
of the Buffalo and Attica road, which the New York and Erie had leased.
In this year, moreover, the railway connection of Buffalo with Canada
and with the West through Canada was undertaken by the beginning of a
Buffalo and Brantford road, which, being extended to Goderich in 1858,
took the name of the Buffalo and Lake Huron railway. In 1853 the consolidation
of the several connecting roads between Buffalo and Albany in the New
York Central, was effected; and in 1855 the Buffalo and Niagara road was
taken into the New York Central system."

Extraordinary Expansion

Almost 20,000 miles
of railway had been laid between 1850 and 1858. The country had really
overstepped itself in the matter, for such an extent of construction had
necessarily entailed stupendous outlays. $700,000,000 of borrowed money,
largely from abroad, had been used when the financial panic came in August,
1857, almost all railway projects were in difficulties. "Railroad corporations
went to the wall; the Michigan Central, Illinois Central, New York and
Erie, among the rest." Still, nothing could stay the onward march of the
railways; the steel arms stretched further and further into and beyond
the settled spaces of the American continent. In 1870 the mileage of United
States railways had reached 49,000; but there was a serious check in 1873
when Jay Cooke, the Union's great financier of the Civil War period, failed
during a monetary stringency, which was world-wide. His grand railway
schemes were at an end-only temporarily, however, and by 1880 the mileage
of American railways stood at 93,671. During the next thirteen years,
which brings the record to another year of extreme financial stringency,
the mileage was almost doubled, reaching 171,805 Miles of completed railway.
That was the most active period of railway construction in American history.
In 1887, 12,878 miles were laid; in 1894 only 1,760 miles. Thereafter
the construction gradually increased until it reached 6,026 miles in 1902.
It averaged nearly that mileage in annual construction until 1907, when
the next money shortage occurred. Since that year, nothing of magnitude
in railway building has been accomplished. It may be considered strange
that during the seven years from 1914 to 1920, only 6,263 miles of new
railway were built; but history shows that railway construction is a national
enterprise, that the state of national finances is at once reflected in
the activity or inactivity of railway-building. American railways were
placed under the control of the national Government during the important
years of the World War and national funds had then to be conserved for
extraordinary uses so that little money could be spared for railway-building.
On January 1, 1920, the railway mileage in the United States was 253,152.17.
New York State had 1,403 miles of railway in 1850; 2,682 miles in 1860;
5,957 miles in; 8,121 miles in 1900; and 8,353.21 miles in 1920.

While the progress
made by Buffalo in general prosperity cannot be more than partly attributed
to its railway facilities, it may be safely stated that means of transportation
largely condition the degree of prosperity. What it meant to Buffalo was
shown by Guy H. Salisbury in 1862. His comparisons were of the period
from 1836, the first year in which a locomotive was seen on the Niagara
Frontier. He wrote:

"In 1836 we had less
than 16,000 inhabitants. Now (1862) we have, in round numbers, 100,000.
* * * In 1836 we had but a single railroad running into Buffalo-that from
Niagara Falls-of not less than twenty miles in length, with no connection
whatever with any other road. Now we have the great New York Central,
with its freight and passenger depots and enormous business-the New York
and Erie, the terminus of whose line is practically here-the Buffalo and
State line, with its interminable western connections-the Buffalo, Western
and Grand Trunk railways, with over two thousand miles of Canadian

Six decades later,
in 1920, Buffalo had a population of more than half a million, and was
so well served by railways that "over half of the country's population
and two-thirds of Canada's were within a night's ride of Buffalo."

There are five important
steam railway passenger terminals or stations in Buffalo, at which the
trains of eleven of the great railways of America are handled. The stations
and companies are: The D. L. and W. Station at the foot of Main street,
used by the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad Company and the
Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway Company; the Lehigh Valley Station,
at Main and Scott streets, used by the Lehigh Company; the Erie Station,
at Exchange and Michigan streets, used by the Eric Railroad Company; the
New York Central Station, at Exchange street, used by the New York Central
lines, east and west, by the Pennsylvania railroad, by the West Shore
railroad, and the Michigan Central Railroad companies; the Grand Trunk
Railway Station, at Black Rock, used by the Grand Trunk Railroad, the
Wabash Railroad, and the Pere Marquette Railroad companies. There are,
in addition, fourteen freight stations within the city limits, handling
an enormous volume of traffic. The capacity of the freight stations is
286 cars inbound, and 343 cars outbound. There are, in addition, immense
lake terminals and bulk freight terminals, capable of handling an enormous
tonnage. The Ore Docks handle between six and eight millions of tons a
year, and the Coal Docks about five millions. All these facilities are
the enterprises, principally, of railway companies.

In the early decades
there was keen competition for tonnage between the Erie Canal and the
railways, and the Erie Canal held its own until the 'eighties as carriers
of grain. Both means of transportation are needed, but the railways have
for several decades earned premier place. In the first years of operation,
the railway companies had to pay tribute to the Canal in the way of tolls
on freight handled by the railways that might otherwise have been carried
on the Canal. It was a somewhat arbitrary exaction, but seemed to only
slightly affect the development of the railway systems. Railway tolls
were abolished in i851; Canal tolls were abolished altogether in 1882
on the Erie Canal, and other State canals.

Briefly reviewing
the development of the railways that have entered Buffalo since 1836:
The year 1852 was eventful when four systems terminating or beginning
in Buffalo were in operation. Mr. Larned, in his "History of Buffalo,"
gave the main facts regarding all of the Buffalo lines from 1836 to 1910,
and as this chapter must necessarily be brief, and his was a concise and
accurate review, it might appropriately be taken here. It begins:

1836. The Buffalo
and Niagara Falls. Acquired by the New York Central Railroad Company in
1855, and extended to Lewiston.

1843. The Buffalo
and Attica, which connected Buffalo with a chain of railroads through
the State to Albany. The erroneous statement has often been made that
this western link in the chain became part of the New York Central Railroad,
in the consolidation of 1853. On the contrary, the Buffalo and Attica
was acquired by the Buffalo and New York Railroad Company and extended
to Hornellsville, to connect with the New York and Erie Railway, then
progressing toward Dunkirk.

1852. The New York
and Erie Railway brought into connection with Buffalo, by the completed
extension of the Buffalo and Attica road to Hornellsville, and also by
the opening of a second line of connecting rails, from Buffalo to Corning.
Both of these lines became integral parts of the New York, Lake Erie,
and Western system, as it now exists.

1852 The Buffalo and
Rochester Railroad, completed to Buffalo by the building of a direct line
of rails between Buffalo and Batavia. Included the next year in the consolidation
with the New York Central line.

1852. The Buffalo
and State Line Railroad, linked with the chain of roads then in formation
along the southern shore of Lake Erie, and thence to Chicago, which, after
some years, were to be forged into the consolidated Lake Shore and Michigan
Southern Railroad line.

1852. The Buffalo
and Brantford. Extended a little later to Goderich, and name changed to
Buffalo and Lake Huron in 1858. Leased in 1870 to the Grand Trunk Railway
Company of Canada, of whose lines it forms the Buffalo terminus. Under
the auspices of the Grand Trunk Company the Niagara River was bridged
at Buffalo by the International Bridge Company, in 1874.

1853. Organization
of the consolidated New York Central Railroad Company, owning and operating
a continuous line from Buffalo to Albany.

1854. Establishment
of a uniform gauge on the connected roads from Buffalo to Chicago, in
the line known ultimately as the Lake Shore and M. S.

1869. Consolidation
of the New York Central and the Hudson River railroad companies in the
New York Central and Hudson River Railroad Company.

1869. Consolidation
of several connected roads by the organization of the Lake Shore and Michigan
Southern Company. Since 1898 the New York Central and Hudson River Railroad
Company has held a majority of its capital stock and controlled the management
of the road.

1870. The Buffalo
Creek Railroad. From William street to Peck Slip and other connections
on the south side of Buffalo River. Leased to the Erie and the Lehigh
Valley railroad companies in i889.

1873. The Canada Southern
Railway, from Buffalo to Amherstburg, on the Detroit River. In 1878 the
ownership of the road underwent a change. For many years past it has been
under lease to the Michigan Central Railroad Company, and is known by
the latter name.

1873. The Buffalo
and Washington Railway. Built from Buffalo to Emporium, Pa., opening direct
connection with the sources of anthracite coal supply and a shortened
route to Philadelphia and Washington. A little later the name was changed
to Buffalo, New York and Philadelphia, and that name, in its turn, was
extinguished by the absorption of the road in the great Pennsylvania Railroad
system. For several years past it has been operated under contract as
the Buffalo and Allegheny Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad.

1875. The Buffalo
and Jamestown. Reorganized in 1877 under a change of name, becoming the
Buffalo and Southwestern Railroad. Leased to the Erie Railway Company
in 1881, and now known, as the Buffalo and Southwestern Division of the
New York, Lake Erie and Western Railroad.

1882. The New York,
Chicago, and St. Louis (known commonly as the Nickel Plate), completed
to Chicago. Reorganized, after a foreclosure sale, in 1887. Large parts
of its capital stock owned by the Lake Shore and M. S. Company and by
the Vanderbilt interest. The road is operated with what is known as the
Vanderbilt system.

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